Plasma display panels (PDP) include a pair of glass flat panels arranged parallel to each other and spaced a distance apart via barrier ribs. The barrier ribs are also arranged to form partitions between the glass panels that can contain an inert gas (e.g., neon, helium, xenon). The partitions are used in part to form a grid of discharge cells corresponding to pixels or sub-pixels in the plasma display that can be individually activated when an electric field is applied across a cell. The electric field excites the inert gas, which gives off ultraviolet radiation that irradiates a phosphor material contained within the cell to in turn give off visible light.
Commonly, PDP barrier ribs are formed using a composition containing an inorganic component, such as glass or ceramic material, and an organic component, such as a curable organic binder. Such compositions can be used to make barrier ribs by employing various techniques including mask-based techniques such as photolithography or sandblasting, screen printing techniques, and direct molding techniques.
When making barrier ribs using compositions that contain glass or ceramic material in an organic binder, it may be desirable to initially form the ribs by curing or otherwise hardening the organic material and then to remove the organic binder component from the ribs by sintering. In the case of many barrier rib compositions, the organic binder component contained therein is capable of forming a polymer compound as a result of curing or hardening. The organic binder component can then subsequently be removed from the ribs by thermal decomposition during sintering. To remove the organic components, sintering can be carried out at relatively high temperatures (e.g., 550.degree. C. to 650.degree. C.) for relatively long period of time (e.g. 30 minutes to 1 or more hours). In general, the higher the sintering temperature, the more likely it is for the panel substrate to warp, shrink, or otherwise distort during processing.
In some PDP rib fabrication processes, it may also be desirable to remove one or more organic additives other than the binder component that may be contained in the rib composition prior to the sintering step that burns out the binder. Additional removal steps generally require additional heating cycles for additional amounts of time, and each heating cycle generally requires temperature control. This can greatly reduce the efficiency of the rib fabrication process.